


Finding Light

by Keraha



Category: Death Note
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-15
Updated: 2005-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keraha/pseuds/Keraha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Little boy," she says. "I love you. I love you. You are a little piece of light."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Light

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a "What if?" post-series fic relatively early in Death Note's run. As such, it takes the story to a much different place than what ended up happening in the series and focuses on different characters.

"Little boy," his mother says, "do you love me?"

He knows that there is no right answer to this question. If he says yes, then she will take him in her lap and kiss him, reducing him to one of toys her room was lined with. She will fall asleep with her hand absently petting his hair, and he will stay awake, back tense. If he says no, then she will strike him across the face and weep. She is a child, in a way that he had never been.

"Little boy," she says. "I love you. I love you. You are a little piece of light."

The boy knows that she will cry now. She will collapse onto her bed, all pale skin and dark clothing, and tears will rush out of her eyes like rain.

"I don't like the dark," she says, sniffling.

The boy sees his mother's little girl face crumple into something old, and tears begin to streak her makeup. She looks like a monster, eyes bleeding black and body desiccated.

"I need light," he hears her mumble. "I need light."

She buries her face in her arms, and the boy knows that she does not care about him anymore. She is lost in her dreams, and he does not exist there. He backs away from the room, knowing that he is nothing. His foot slips on a sheet of paper, and he staggers against the wall. His hand hits the light switch, and the room floods with yellow light.

"Light," the boy hears his mother wail anew. "Misa needs you."

\--

The house is large, and he can lose himself in it if he throws himself into one room after the next, using side doors and random corridors. He has been through these hallways more times than he can count but never in the same order.

Today, he runs in through the double doors on the third floor, and goes through a series of doors to the left. Finally, he has spun around enough times, climbed enough stairs, slammed open enough doors, that he does not know where he is any more. He does not look around carefully to figure it out. So he pulls open another door and is prepared to drown himself in the loudness of silence. When he jerks the door handle down and feels the grit of years protest under his hand, he can tell it will be a quiet room.

He stops.

This-- he thinks. This is different.

The room is beautiful, as all the rooms are, but it is beautiful in another way. He notices first the walls-- they have pink wallpaper, but there is a strip of _stuff_ lining the room. As he walks closer, he notices that the line of yellowing paper on the wall is actually made up of newspaper clippings. The line starts at his waist and extends an arm's length above his head. They are not organized; rather, the sheets are as though someone has taped them hastily against the wall when the mood struck. The line swells as it approaches the bed, until the headboard is surrounded by the clippings. The vanity mirror, too, has the paper stuffed into the frames.

The mirror is cracked as though someone has thrown something at it, and as if to prove his point, a black book lies face down on the counter below.

The boy walks towards the vanity, and he feels the pressure of years weighing down on him. It is an unfamiliar silence, but not an unwelcoming one, and he can almost feel a presence behind him.

He picks up the book, first, and closes it. The letters are white on black, and crooked. Not Japanese, like the loud magazines his mother throws on her bedroom floor, but different. He traces his finger along the letters, and they come off like flakes of blood.

White out? he wonders, remembering the way his mother would once apply the stuff to her nails. As he rubs, the letters came off, and he realizes-- yes, it is.

He flips it open.

_January 5, 5:00 pm-- Light-kun, call Misamisa_

_January 5, 5:03 pm-- Light-kun, return to Misa_

_January 6, 3:47 am-- Yagami Light, return to Japan_

The pen is pink, and the letters are as coy as letters can be. There are hearts around all the words except for "Yagami Light." Those are written in a careful script. The entries continue, devolving into pleas and "Misamisa misses you" and "Come back to Misamisa." Sometimes, the entries progressed at minute long intervals-- those were often the most desperate-- and others were after days. Those were the hopeless sounding ones.

He flips through the book, feeling his stomach twist. This devotion is utterly abhorrent, but he finds he cannot stop.

On the last page, the entries are every hour. The penmanship is not as pleasant; the words are slashed desperately onto the page and he can feel the imprint on the page before.

_Yagami Light, come back to Misamisa. Say you love her. Make love to her. Stay with her always. Die after she does. Die of a broken heart. _

The paper is wrinkled with wet, and the boy thinks that they are tears.

The notebook is pathetic, and he wonders why Yagami Light would want to come back to this demanding woman. She is his mother, and if he could escape her, he would never come back.

He puts the book down and sets the fallen chair up right. He stands on it, pressing his hands against the mirror, and reads the clippings. "KIRA MURDERS MURDERER," one said. "KIRA AVOIDS CAPTURE." "FBI CALLED IN ON KIRA CASE." "TWELVE AGENTS DISAPPEARED."

Underneath many of the papers, he sees one slightly less yellow. He tugs at it, and it pulls out several other articles and a sheet of paper along with it. "KIRA GONE?" the headline asks.

He reads the article, but finds that it is boring. Kira, a murderer, had apparently disappeared. He tries to put the article back where he found it, but it does not stay. So he steps off the chair and gathers up the sheets that he had dropped in taking it out. There are more clippings, and underneath them, he sees a sheet of paper, still pristine. It had crumpled, but had been carefully smoothed out again so that the creases are just little tracings of lines.

_Keep this for the future_, it says.

The boy wonders what it means. He gathers it with the rest of the papers, and his brow furrows as he sticks it back. The mirror wobbles as he pushes against it with his arm.

When he is done, he sits in the chair, and looks at the vast expanse of Kira-love. It is disturbing--just a little-- to see so much passion caught in a moment. He does not know how much time has been spent on this, but he is aware that it must have been a long time. There are layers to the articles, and he can peel them away with his fingernails.

He has never felt love like that, and he wonders what it can mean.

Before long, he gets to his feet and walks along the side of the room. He reads the headlines of the articles slowly. In the earliest ones, they are large, but as the upper levels got whiter, the writing got smaller. Until the Kira Gone articles, which were huge, written in explosive red.

He sits down on the bed. The bedsprings squeak as though they have not been used in a long time, and the sheets are crumpled. He feels as though there is someone in the room with him, and the hair on the back of his neck prickles.

He swears he can hear the sound of a loud, choking laugh in the distance.

When he sneaks a look behind his back, he sees nothing.

\--

The little boy stays in that room. He is aware of the hunger in his stomach, but he does not care. There is something captivating about the obsessive love in this room. It is beyond his scope of emotion, and he studies it. The sunlight stops leaking through between the heavy curtains and before long, he strains his eyes to read the text.

After the room becomes dark, and he can only barely make out the shape of his hand in front of his face, he finds his way to the vast bed and curls up underneath the covers. It feels like an intrusion, to disturb this place, but at the same time, he feels as though he belongs. The rest of the house is like a stranger, but this room is like a father he has never met.

He draws his legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. He does not fall asleep for a long time, and he chews his thumb while he waits.

"It is so dark," he thinks, and he before long, he falls asleep.

\--

When he wakes up, he wanders out of the room, but pays attention to the hallways he goes through. He wants to be able to find it again; there is something in that room that calls to him.

By the time he gets down to the first floor living room, he is sure that he knows where it is.

Then he hears the tones of a male voice, and he stiffens. His mother has company. He cracks the door open a little bit, and he can see the lines of a back. He thinks it is Matsuda, because only he would bring flowers. The others just bring themselves and an angry voice.

"Hello, Misa," Matsuda says.

"Matsu-chan!" The boy watches as his mother's face crinkles into the little girl mask. She is coy, and her shirt is tight around her body, exposing the white of her abdomen. She is almost thirty now, but she acts like she is thirteen.

"How have you been?" He catches her as she runs to him, then drops a kiss on her lips.

"Misa missed Matsu-chan," she says.

"I missed you too," he says. "But you know how work is-- always have to travel."

His mother wraps her arms around his neck and nuzzles him, her blonde-streaked-now-with-black hair obscuring her face. They spend a sickening moment like that, drowning in false newlywed love. The boy knows that they are not like that when they have been together for a long time, and that Matsuda's travels are not because of work. The boy has seen Matsuda slip a ring off his finger and place it discretely in his back pocket.

Matsuda is the one he can recognize the best because he is the only one who seems to stay. Sometimes, Matsuda stays for weeks at a time, with the whispered excuse, "You know how work is."

He has heard them fight, late at night, as Matsuda's voice becomes desperate-- _Misa, I love you, you know that, I love you, forget about him, forget about Light. Love me. Misa, please. _ The little boy cannot respect Matsuda then, because everything in this house pleads for love, and Matsuda is just another object. When the bedsprings creak, and he hears his mother gasp, the little boy goes from room to room again, trying to not hear the breathy _Matsu-chan._

He does not like Matsuda, because Matsuda represents a world outside of the house. It wants his mother, but his mother wants nothing to do with it.

At the same time, the boy knows that he means nothing, and that his mother and Matsuda will always be like this. He knows that Matsuda does not like him, because he is Misa's little piece of light. The little boy knows that when Matsuda is around, his mother forgets that he is there. So he lurks where he is not needed.

The boy steps away from the door and freezes as the floorboard squeaks underneath his foot. He has not been in this part of the house for such a long time that he has forgotten.

Careless, be berates himself. Careless. So, so _careless_.

"Oh," Matsuda says, breaking contact with his mother's lips, turning slowly. He sees the boy, and the boy cowers, just a little. "Oh," he says again.

"What?" his mother breathes against Matsuda's neck. She doesn't spare the boy a look.

"He's-- gotten big," Matsuda says, still staring.

"Mm?"

"He-- He looks just like--" Matsuda swallows. "_Him_."

"Who?" his mother spares a moment of Matsuda-adoration to glance at the little boy. "Oh. Yes. Little boys grow up. But he is nothing like him."

The little boy retreats. He cannot stand them looking at him like that. Like they don't see him, but they see something that he was supposed to be. Like he does not measure up.

The boy is sick of hearing of Light and of being nothing. He _will_ be something. He knows it.

\--

The boy is in the room again, and he is convinced there is someone is watching him. He does not talk to it, but he listens for the laughter. He can hear it louder now, as though it has come closer. He wonders when it will finally approach him; he is certain that one day, it will.

The boy lies in the bed and clutches the pristine sheet of paper to his chest.

_Keep this for the future_, it says, and he does. He does not know what it is or what it means, but he knows that it is important, that will one day lead him-- lead him where?

He does not know.

All he knows is that when he is in the room, he feel as though he is changing. It is as though the room is a cuccoon and he is metamorphosing from boy to something more.

\--

When the boy walks into the kitchen, he freezes.

Matsuda is sitting at the table, spooning soggy cereal into his mouth. The newspaper is on the table, and he is in the middle of turning the page when he sees the boy.

"Er," Matsuda says. He coughs into his hand and looks painfully awkward. "Good morning."

The boy looks at him.

"Um. Here, you can sit down," Matsuda says, pulling out the chair to his left.

The boy hesitates for a moment-- does he want to spend time in this man's presence? He thinks back to the black book in the room and he realizes that this man knows Yagami Light and the desperation that is his mother Misa. He sits.

Matsuda makes a noise, a huff of something between surprise and relief.

The chair is rickety and old, but it is large enough that the boy can bring his legs up and tuck them against his body. The floor is cold, and his toes curl.

Matsuda scoops more cereal into his mouth. Before long, he is forced to chase soggy loops of yellow and green around the bowl with his spoon. The boy is aware that Matsuda wants to make a good impression for some reason or another and makes no comments as Matsuda grows frustrated. He gives up on the cereal and drinks straight from the bowl. When he puts it down, the boy is mildly amused to see a faint lining of milk on his upper lip. Matsuda licks it off.

"So," Matsuda says at last.

The boy does not say anything.

"You know," Matsuda says, squinting at the boy. "You remind me a lot of--" He stops. "Do you like puzzles?" he asks abruptly.

The boy considers.

"I mean, figuring things out. Solving mysteries and all that."

The boy thinks of the room and the mysteries it contains. He knows that he wants, more than anything in the world, to figure it out. Love is piled in that room like dust, and he cannot breathe it in without choking. He wants to find the door that the pristine sheet of paper will open. He nods shortly.

"Oh good!" Matsuda says, his voice loud. The tension leaks out of him as he smiles, wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. "I brought some work with me and I was wondering if you'd like to look at it. They're puzzles," he says. "That's what my work is-- solving puzzles."

Matsuda stands up, then walks towards the door. He stops, then grins sheepishly and says, "Gotta put my bowl away, huh?" He puts the bowl in the sink. "Oh-- And the cereal! Ha! Ha!" The way he laughs, the boy can almost imagine the words written out, each breathy syllable punctuated with exclamation points.

Matsuda closes the box of cereal and places it on a counter. The boy does not tell him that it does not belong there, that it should go in the cabinet, but instead watches as Matsuda exits the room.

The room is silent. The faucet used to leak, but his mother had called someone to fix it not too long ago. He had found the sound of drops soothing, and he finds it disconcerting without it. Something in the background had changed, and he did not notice until it was gone.

"Aha! Here it is!" Matsuda says, bursting through the doors.

The boy starts. Matsuda is too loud for this house; instead of succumbing to the stifling quiet, he spills over with noise. The boy thinks that this is the reason Matsuda and his mother do not get along after a week together here; the house warps him.

Matsuda slams down the briefcase on the table, and the sound ricochets against the walls. He says, "Ahaha… sorry about that." He pulls out a manila folder and spreads its contents on the table. "Okay," Matsuda says, half to himself. "This is the stuff we have-- fact sheet-- transcripts and logs-- pictures -- things we don't know." The piles are strangely neat, and the boy has difficulties comparing this organized system to Matsuda, the epitome of whirlwind absentmindedness.

He finds that he is curious, and he clambers off the chair to stand by Matsuda.

"Okay," Matsuda says. His hands clench and unclench, and the boy gets a feeling that he is second guessing himself. "Okay. So the case-- er, puzzle-- is this. We have a bad man, except we don't know who he is. And no one else knows either. All we have is this. And uh, we want to find him. Using this." He gestures at the "transcripts and logs" pile. "He has been killing-- er, doing bad things to people." After a moment, Matsuda gathers the "pictures" pile and puts them back in the folder. "So we have to find him."

The boy picks up the first factsheet and his eyes move across the paper. His lips mouth the words, and his brow furrows. The story is unraveling in front of his eyes and he can almost visualize the man.

Like a mole, the boy burrows into the papers. He swallows the information whole, trusting his brain to digest the information. He begins to draw lines in his mind, connecting idea to word, and he reads faster.

This woman is lying, he thinks. She is too certain.

When he reaches over Matsuda to grab the last pile, he finally notices that Matsuda has been watching him the entire time. The boy shrugs mentally, and he finishes it.

The puzzle is in front of him, pieces almost in place.

"What do you think?" Matsuda asks, and the boy is struck by the hard light in his eyes. This is not the Matsuda he knows, and he feels as though he should reevaluate the man.

The boy shrugs. "The man is foolish," he says, and he clears his throat. He speaks past ages of not-speaking.

"What makes you think that?" Matsuda asks.

The boy points to the sheets of paper. "He killed them, and he thinks he can get away."

"Do you think he can't?"

"You already have him," the boy says.

After a silence, Matsuda laughs, a nervous, breathy exhale. "You really are like him."

In the silence following, the boy thinks he can hear that awful, choking laugh.

\--

The boy has taken to sleeping in the room now.

It is far away from his mother's room, and he cannot hear her say Matsuda's name. He has read all of the articles on Kira now, and he feels as though he knows Kira, too. His mother loved Kira, and his mother loves Light. Kira was once Light, but things changed. He knows the logic does not make sense, but he takes comfort thinking that Kira is Light and Kira is his father.

He sleeps in the room, and he dreams wild things.

"Is the future now?" he hears a voice say. When he opens his eyes, he is surprised to find that his dream is taking place in the room. The speaker lounges by the window, drapes half open. The moonlight is full, and the boy can see a silhoutte. The speaker is a monster, huge shoulders narrowing into a thin waist, limbs spiderlike.

"No," the other responds. This one is still in shadow, and the boy feels as though he knows him. "Not yet."

"But he's just like you," the first says. The boy notices that the monster has an apple in his hand, and the monster takes a bite, spraying juice into the air. The monster grins, then shoves the rest of the apple into his mouth. "Just like you."

"No," the second says, and the boy can imagine his lips curving into a smile. "Not like me. _Better_."

The monster laughs, and the boy recognizes it as the laughter he has heard in the background for so many days.

"You know he has touched the scrap you left for Misa," the monster said, black lips spread in a leer.

"Yes," the other mused. "I didn't think he would find it yet."

"But he did." The monster contorted, unable to keep still for his excitement. "He can _see_ you."

"Not yet."

"Light--" the monster says, "time does not pass the same way here. You must do it soon."

"I know," Light says. (The boy stares, wide-eyed. This is _Light_.) "But he is not ready yet." The boy swallowed as the silhoutte that was Light turned. He knew that Light was looking at him.

"When is the future, Light?" the monster asked. "When are you going to show him?"

"Not yet," Light says. "But soon."

\--

The boy sits in front of the vanity. He is filled to the brim with Kira, and he feels as though the man is there beside him. He closes his eyes for a moment, and he thinks of the sheets of paper that Matsuda arranged on the table. The papers in the room are just like that-- extended with love and passion. Hundreds of factsheets, logs, and transcripts, all conveniently pasted into a massive circle. The boy breathes in through his nose, slowly, and when he exhales, he opens his eyes. He stares into the mirror. He imagines himself seven years back. He is not born yet, but he exists as a swollen curve in his mother's belly.

He can see his mother, sitting where he is-- no. That is not right. If Light were here, she would not be composed enough.

He imagines he can see his mother in the reflection, clutching onto Light-- desperately, she is always desperately-- and kissing him. Light is only a silhoutte, but one with a face that looks like his, and his mouth devours hers. They are in love--

No.

That does not fit.

He tries again.

His mother is on the bed, head propped up and hand stroking her stomach. It is a slow, seductive movement, and the boy wonders how this can be. She does not love him now, but back then, she loved his potential. Yes, that is right.

"Light," she says. (Light-kun? Light-chan?) "Do you love me?"

Light stands in front of the vanity mirror and fixes his collar; he has a meeting to go to and he cannot stay at home to tend to his needy, super-model wife. He is a busy man, and he has-- something more to do than at work. He solves things about bad people. Murderers.

The boy scowls as he tries to make the pieces fit. When they don't, he continues the scenario anyway.

"We need to be careful," Light says. "Kira may have been apprehended, but--"

"Kira will never be taken," Misa says emphatically. "Light is too good to be found out." She rubs the curve of her abdomen. "And he will make the world perfect for our baby." She beams.

Light's lips curve into a dark smile, and the boy shivers. Is this truly Light? he wonders.

"Perfect," he says. "For the baby."

"Yes," Misa says adoringly. "Oh-- what should we name him?" She giggles. "Light Junior?"

Light's hands drop down to his side, and he looks at himself in the mirror. The boy suspects that he is doing that to avoid the woman that is his mother. "I have to go to work," Light says. "My father thinks I am not working enough." He laughs shortly. "He thinks I am spending all of my time with you."

Misa's legs uncross at the ankles, and somehow her posture becomes like something in a magazine. Attractive, the boy things analytically. Seductress. But he notices that it is a fake attraction, as though she is trying to hard.

"Light does not spend enough time with Misamisa," she says, looking at him petulantly. "He is always at work. He does not spend enough time with Misa."

The boy tries to explore the scenario, trying out various responses for Light. But he is tired and he finds that he cannot project anymore of Light. Everything he has heard about Light is a caricature. The black notebook is his mother's, but that Light is Misa's Light, not the real one. Matsuda's comments might be real, but they are reflected off of the boy, certain characteristics highlighted.

Maybe Light is not nearly as smart as the boy thinks he is. Or maybe, he is that much smarter.

Light, the boy thinks, is the most complex out of all of them, and that is why Light intrigues him.

Matsuda has said that he is just like Light; the boy does not know if that is true, but he is determined to find out.

\--

It is four days later, and Matsuda still has not left.

The boy hears scuffles down the hall. It makes him strangely anxious and he makes his way to the door. He walks in barefeet on cold hardwood, and the door is barely shut. He touches it with a finger, and it whispers open.

He hesitates.

Misa sighs, "_Matsu-chan._"

Matsuda says, "_Misa._"

The boy does not need anymore to figure out what is going on.

He turns to leave, but he hears his mother moan, and there is a frantic note of wantneednow. She is demanding, as she always is, and the boy suddenly wonders, Why? She has always been desperate, and he always assumed it was because she is spoiled-- has always been spoiled. But he remembers how she used to wait for Light.

She used to argue with Matsuda about waiting. About how she would wait for him.

Not any more. Not last time either. The boy recalls the past few visits, and he can almost see his mother's diminishing patience.

No, not diminishing patience. It is as though she knows she is running out of time. She is not yet thirty, and the boy feels as though she is hurtling towards the end of the life.

The boy listens for a moment more, as though hearing her gasps will lead him to the answer. It doesn't, and he walks away in disgust.

\--

The next day, the boy walks into the kitchen, aware of the sounds of cereal crunching. Not surprisingly, Matsuda is there, looking disturbingly comfortable. His legs are sprawled out in front of him, and he slouches in his chair. It is utterly unlike the time before when he offered the boy a puzzle.

As if to punctutated the oddness, Matsuda glances at him, then asks without a trace of awkwardness, "Do you want to try out another puzzle?"

A puzzle, the boy thinks to himself, almost laughing. It is not funny, but then again, what Matsuda offers is not a puzzle.

The boy knows that if he says yes, Matsuda will give him another manila folder filled with neatly safety-pinned sheets printed out on eight and a half by eleven inch copy paper. Perhaps Matsuda will leave the pictures this time. He wishes Matsuda would. But he knows that he does not need the pictures to understand. It is the thoughts behind the actions that he wishes to learn to read, and through these "puzzles" he can find out.

Matsuda tosses a loop into his mouth and his teeth crunch loudly, obnoxiously, on it.

"Yes," the boy says.

He feels older, as though in the few days that Matsuda has been here, he has aged ten years.

Matsuda begins to lay out the sheets, then hesitates. He looks at the boy, then puts the papers back in the folder and hands the entire thing over to the boy.

This time, as he reads, Matsuda scrutinizes him. He sits at the chair while the boy sits on the floor. The floor is cold, and the boy rests his chin on his propped up knees. The papers are arranged in a semi-circle around him.

This case is harder than the other one, but even before he reads the last pile, the boy knows what kind of man the killer is. He is cocky, but he knows that he must step carefully or someone will find him out. He wishes he could stop, but he loves his victims, loves them so dearly before he slams his knife expertly between two vertebrae and lowers them to the floor. He kisses, strokes, _loves_.

The boy closes his eyes and he can imagine being there in the shroud-like dark with this stranger. He imagines it must be a wonderful, heady way to die. Or, not to die, so much, but perhaps to kill. He can taste a type of passion on his tongue. A similar passion is on the walls of the room two stories above his head; and he knows that this is part of the key.

The pristine sheet of paper is upstairs, still tucked into the mirror frame, it looks so much like the copy in front of him. But there is a subtle difference in texture and he wonders why he could not feel it before.

He opens his eyes, and he sees Matsuda looking at him. It is not a stare-- that has connotations he does not intend-- but it is something searching.

The boy opens his mouth to tell him what he knows, but he realizes that Matsuda does not know the answer to this one. He does not know who did it, and he holds his cards in front of him, hoping the boy will pick the right one and prove to him how.

It is wrong, the boy thinks, to get the end result without doing the work.

"This one is difficult," the boy says.

"Mm," Matsuda says.

The boy smiles a little bit, the corners of his lips curling up into an expression he cannot remember using before.

"It was Ukeida," the boy says, citing one of the suspects.

When Matsuda's brows furrow, the boy can imagine the man linking words and phrases that had no relevence into a suitable argument.

"Hm," Matsuda says at last. "I can see why you think that."

The boy's smile is dark. It is Matsuda's fault for believing him, he thinks.

\--

He falls asleep in front of the vanity. His head is slumped into his knees, and the black notebook is cradled on the bend of his leg and stomach. The pristine sheet of paper is clenched in his right hand. Just as it appears that his grip has relaxed enough for it to fall, the boy's hand tightens convulsively.

\--

"Boy," someone says. He feels pressure on his shoulder.

He wakes up, slowly, feeling his senses switch on like the lights in the attic-- flickering on and off until they buzz alive. He stays in that position, curled on in the chair, and he waits to figure out who is there. His breath stays slow and steady.

"I know you're awake," the voice says, and it laughs. It is not his mother, and it is not Matsuda. It is a hoarse, creaky voice that sounds as though it has eaten sandpaper and spat out rocks.

The boy opens his eyes, and he is vaguely surprised to find that the room is well lit. Not lit from sunlight-- the room's drapes are never open enough to allow that-- but lit like candles and lamps. He looks forward into the mirror, and he does not see anyone.

The laugh is giddy now, drunk on something that the boy cannot name. He can feel a ghostly breath on his ear, and he turns.

The first thing he registers are unnaturally wide yellow eyes. Then he sees blue skin, a turned up nose with curving nostrils, then black lips, spread into a leer.

He does not gasp; instead he presses his lips together and waits for his racing heart to steady into something natural. In the mean time, he studies the monster.

The monster cackles, and he flips in a circle, legs and arms twisting at unnatural angles. "You are _just like him_," the monster says gleefully. "Except _he_ fell out of his chair."

"Who-- Light?" The boy asks, not quite sure what he's asking. Who he's asking.

He gets no answer beyond a strange hilarity. The monster is twisting so hard the boy wonders why he does not hear the monster's spine crack.

"Who are you?" the boy demands. He feels as though this is an intrusion on his privacy, but he also has a feeling that the monster is as much a part of this room as Kira is.

"I am called Ryuk," the monster says. He laughs to the point of choking. "I'm a god of death."

The boy's eyes widen, and he can't stop the reaction until after it happens. "You--"

"I reap souls," Ryuk says, and his grin is vicious. "I live off of them."

"But--" But what? The boy does not know.

"Would you like to know how Kira killed?" Ryuk says, apropos nothing.

"I--" The boy stares at the monster. He is not sure how to approach this situation; the monster claims it is a god of death, and there is no proof either for or against it. The monster also claims to know the one bit of information about Kira that the boy cannot figure out for himself. He swallows, then says calmly, "Yes. If you know." He hopes that the monster will not ask anything in return; he does not know what the result of losing his soul would be.

"I know, I _know_ how Kira kills," Ryuk smirks. "I ought to-- I gave it to him."

"What will you take if I ask how?" the boy asks. He is afraid, but he also needs to know, and he is willing to do almost anything for the information. He gives Ryuk a level glance. "My soul?"

Ryuk leers. "Why would I do that? Oh no, little boy, I have other uses for you. You are just like Light. You are very, very interesting. Killing you would be a waste."

"I see," the boy says. He doesn't, but with that concern out of the way, he has more important things to understand. "How does Kira kill?"

The monster does not answer immediately, he flips in front of the boy to sit on the vanity. He picks up the black notebook in his claws, and the boy is strangely disturbed to see that the monster does not have a reflection.

"Do you know what this says?" the monster asks, tapping a black nail against the crumbling white letters of the notebook.

"It is not Japanese," the boy says.

"English is the most popular language in the world," Ryuk says. "And yet it drops into a country that does not speak it-- and into the hands of someone who can read it."

"I can't read it," the boy says irritably.

"It says 'Death Note,'" Ryuk says. "But it is not a real one. This is an imitation that Misa made. She wanted something bad enough to fake a Death Note. But no matter how much she wants, she cannot cause the power of death. You see, boy, the real Death Note can kill in any way possible, as long as it follows a certain set of rules. It,"-- Ryuk grins-- "can cause a person to act some way to cause their death."

The boy thinks of what is in that notebook, and suddenly he understands the demands for Light. He sees his mother sitting in front of the vanity, her stomach shrunken back to normal, a baby screaming in the background. She wants Light back, she wants the baby to stop crying. She needs Light. She uses black nail polish to lacquer a book, uses white-out to write the letters. She finishes at four in the evening, and waits an hour before filling in the first entry. Her hands tremble in excitement; she has finally figured out how to bring Light back to her.

The boy is frozen. He is horrified, but he cannot stop the thoughts rolling through his mind.

Misa returns to the book every day, waiting for Light to come back. She expects him to call her, to ring the door bell, to kiss her awake in the morning. She withers away; she closes the doors to her house, fires all the maids and hired help. She throws her life into this book and she waits for Light to come back. She fails. The child grows, from a red-faced baby into a pale toddler, into a boy, and the boy is nothing but a piece of Light.

The boy's breath comes faster.

"_Yes_," Ryuk hisses. "She thought she loved Light, but she did not love him enough. Light did not come back. Because, you see, even if her Death Note were real, she could not force someone to do something they would not have done normally. And Light had no thoughts of returning. Not yet, anyway."

"Why?" the boy bursts out. "Why didn't he return?"

"Kira used this notebook to kill the criminals he thought deserved it," Ryuk says. "He punished them to create a perfect world where he would be god. He gave them heart attacks, but soon enough, the police caught on. Other countries got involved, but when people began to die, Japan stood alone, and then they stopped, and it was left to a man named Ryuuzaki to solve it." Ryuk's grin was thin. "And Light was part of the investigation."

"So that is why-- the Kira articles--" the boy breathes, realizing the source of obsessive love. It returned again to Light. "But what is--" He inhales deeply and gathers his thoughts. He understands the articles. "What is that?"

The boy points to the pristine paper, and the neat lettering, _Keep this for the future_.

"This," Ryuk laughs, "is a scrap of the real Death Note."

\--

The rest of the world seems grayer when he is not in the room. The rooms blur into one another, and the boy cannot remember why he would leave.

Ah, he remembers. Food. Ryuk told him to eat, because that is what humans do, and he was human. Only human.

So he travels down stairs and hallways to the kitchen.

The boy watches from the doorway as Matsuda brings bags of groceries into the house, telling Misa that he knows how to make tiramisu and that he will cook a delicious dinner for her.

"Matsu is too good," his mother simpers, clinging to his arm. "He's going to make Misamisa fat."

Misa has been spending more time with Matsuda, the boy thinks, living her life like a candle burning down. He wonders when she will reach the end of her wick, wonders if some god of death with blow out the candle before then.

"You will never be fat," Matsuda says, leaning in to kiss her.

His mother giggles, pressing into the kiss, then pulling away.

The boy thinks of pregnancy and the taut roundness of near-birth. He looks at his mother, and after a moment, her glance falls towards him. Their eyes meet and she shudders.

"About that dinner then," Matsuda says. He turns around and begins sorting things on the table. The boy can almost imagine him saying, "Factsheets-- logs-- transcripts," except with lady fingers and sugar and a can of espresso.

Matsuda is good only by rote, the boy realizes. He is not genius.

His mother pretends to help Matsuda, and he humors her back. The boy knows that both of them are aware of him.

So when Misa takes Matsuda's hand and flirtingly licks the cinnamon dusting on it, he remembers how unimportant he is. He will not be like that, he thinks. Not for long.

He cannot wait to go back to the room.

The boy swallows down dinner, not tasting the meal beyond the sensation of unchewed food sliding through his throat. His mother laughs over each bite, oozing thick sincerity -- _This is so sweet, Matsu. So sweet of you _. He does not approve of this woman. He wishes that Ryuk would come down, slip between floors, and write "Amane Misa" on that pristine sheet of paper.

It is selfish, but he enjoys the the thought.

Matsuda feeds his mother tiramisu, carefully balanced on chopsticks, and the boy imagines them dying.

\--

Ryuk sits with the boy in the room at night. The boy sits in the chair by the vanity while Ryuk hangs an inch off the floor, contorted yet comfortable.

"But what if you don't know their name?" the boy demands.

"There are other ways to finding that out," Ryuk replies. His hand brushes over the holster wrapped around his leg, a leather cross with lines of wear.

"Stop being like that!" the boy shouts. He is flushed and angry, filled with more emotion than he can remember. "This is _important_. This is Kira and Light and this is _me_."

While Ryuk had been a wealth of information, the boy cannot stand how he laughs. It is an insult, because every shuddering exhale is a reminder that the monster knows something the boy does not. It is infuriating. If there is nothing to laugh about, Ryuk should not laugh. The boy's breath comes faster, until his thin chest is heaving with breath. He grabs an old stick of eyeliner from the vanity and the pristine sheet of paper. He says, "If you don't stop, I'm going to kill you."

"Oh?" Ryuk straightens a little bit, and moves closer to the boy until the boy is reminded of their height difference and of Ryuk's monstrous appearance. "Do you think you can kill me with that, boy?"

The boy's hand trembles over the eyeliner, and he is not sure if it is from anger or fear.

"Do you think that a god of death can be killed by their own tools of destruction?"

"Yes," the boy says. His nostrils flare with every inhale. "You haven't told me how, but now I know that they can die." He pierces Ryuk with a stare. "And everyone has a weakness."

Ryuk laughs. "Humans," he says, "are so interesting."

The boy's breaths slow, until he is the epitome of control, breaths even and heart rate constant. "You were one once, weren't you? A human, I mean?" He cocks his head.

"People who receive the Death Note," Ryuk says, "do not go to heaven or hell."

"Yes," the boy says. "But what does that _mean_?"

"It means you have to make a choice," Ryuk says. He takes a black book from the holster on his thigh and tosses it onto the vanity with a careless flick of the wrist. The book slides against the dark wood, scattering old lipstick and nail polish. The noise is loud and immediate. The boy starts and his hand makes a dark mark against the pristine paper with the eyeliner. He stares at the pristine paper and the crumbling smudge, then his gaze crawls over to the black book.

"Is this--?"

"It's real," Ryuk says. The way he stands reminds the boy of the rats he has seen in the attic, tense and curious. There is a hungry gleam in his eye, and the boy wonders, _for what?_

Then he feels the weight of the air pressing down on his arm. He knows there is no choice, not really, and he watches in fascination as his hand arcs out and clasps the book.

\--

"You know," Matsuda says the next morning. "I don't think I've ever asked your name."

The boy jerks, a muscle in his cheek clenching tight.

Matsuda takes in a breath to say something, then stops, and says instead, "Er, have I?" He scoops cereal into his mouth and chews, waiting for the boy to answer.

"No," the boy says.

"Oh." Matsuda waits for a moment. His fingers play over the end of his spoon. "So, uh, what _is_\--"

"Matsu-chan!" Misa trills as she walks into the room. She sees the cereal, then tsks. "Cereal again? You made such a wonderful dinner last night, yet you can't make yourself anything for breakfast?"

The boy looks at the table as Misa places herself in Matsuda's lap, drawing a hand down the side of his face.

"I like cereal, Misa," he says. "My wi-- I've always eaten it for breakfast." He smiles wanly. "Dinners were always the special meal."

"Mmm," she breathes. "They _are_ special. But doesn't Matsu-chan want to make Misamisa something for breakfast? She is getting old and old people can't eat cereal."

"You're not old, silly."

The boy catches a look on Misa's face as she looks down at herself. An instant later, she is smiling, and she says, "Oh, Matsu-chan is such a flatterer."

"Here," Matsuda says, face brightening. "I'll make you an omelette." He puts Misa aside, then leaps to his feet. "I know I saw some eggs. Would you like one--?" he begins to ask, turning to the boy.

But the boy is gone. Matsuda sees the bowl of cereal, brown flakes floating serenely on the milk. "He didn't even finish his breakfast," he says disapprovingly.

"Don't mind him," Misa says, leaning in for a kiss. "He is just a boy."

\--

"Ryuk!" the boy shouts as he slams the door shut behind him. "Ryuk! I want to know how to use it."

"Oh," the boy hears from the side. "Ryuk isn't here right now." The voice is smooth, and utterly unlike Ryuk's.

The boy turns and sees a man, standing by the articles on the wall. He is a strangely familiar silhoutte against the aging yellow paper.

"Light," the boy mouths.

Light's lips curve into a smile. "Yes," he says. He looks at the boy. "You want to use the Death Note?"

"I--" The boy does not know what to say. Or what the right thing to say would be.

"It can change the world," Light says. He glances towards the wall of Kira-love and begins to step towards the boy. The boy noticed that he moved oddly, as though he had a few more joints in his body, a little too smooth to be human. "Are you ready for the responsibility?"

"People-- people should always do the right thing," the boy says slowly. "What may not help one person might help lots more."

Light's expression changes. The boy cannot pinpoint what it is that changes in his face, but Light's face is triumphant, dark and wildly elated. "Exactly," he says, then places a cold hand on the boy's shoulder. "With the power of the Death Note," he whispers in the boy's ear, "you could create a new world. A perfect world."

The boy shudders. The words snake down his spine and seep into the marrow of his bones.

"It is-- just like Kira," the boy says aloud, eyes focused a thousand miles away.

"Just like Kira," Light agrees. He leads the boy to the vanity and makes a slight gesture indicating he should sit. The boy moves like an automaton. "You know about Kira. Misa was--" he paused. "A singular girl."

"My mother-- Misa-- She--" The boy inhales. "She loved Kira. She believed in him. And she knew about the Death Note." Realization dawns on his face, clear and horrifying. "Was she Kira?"

"She was," Light says amiably.

"And you worked with L to find her out?" the boy's voice is high, incredulous.

"She loved me."

"You--" the boy is appalled. "You _used_ her."

"If I didn't," Light says, straightening. "Then things would have been very different. Remember, boy, the greater good."

"You were Kira, too," the boy says, his eyebrows drawing together. "You must have been. Misa could be used, but not for originality. She reflects. And she reflected you, because she loved you. Loves you."

Light waits for the boy to finish thinking things out.

"And you worked for L and the investigation to find out Kira. Yet you weren't caught, you just disappeared. How--"

"Did you know," Light says casually, "the government stopped all official investigations to find Kira? They did not want to risk their lives. Yet L and his group worked outside of all that. They were vicious, verging on the lawless. L called on criminals to help him."

"So--"

"The government wanted nothing to do with Kira. When he stopped, they were glad to sweep it all under the rug."

The boy sits back in the chair and exhales slowly.

"But that is all the past," Light says. "It is over. Now you have to be concerned with what the future will bring. What are _you_ going to do with the Death Note?"

"Me? I--" The boy is quiet, thinking. He chews at the flesh of his thumb, worrying the skin around the nail. Finally, he looks up at Light through the dark fringe of hair, and takes wipes his thumb against the faded fabric on the seat. "I will use it the way I must."

"Yes," Light agrees.

The boy glances over his shoulder, and he sees Ryuk bending himself at unhuman angles, cramming fingers into his mouth to keep from laughter spilling out.

"Yes," the boy repeats thoughtfully. "I will use it the way I must."

Light smiles again, warm and paternal.

\--

When the boy writes the first name in the book he feels Light's hand draped comfortingly over his shoulder. Light's breath is on his ear, strangely cold, strangely inhuman. But with Light at his back, it is surprisingly easy.

_Amane Misa_, he begins. Then pauses.

"It's her time," Light says.

  
\--

Misa wakes up warm in her bed. Matsuda's arms are wrapped around her, his chest against her back. She smiles. Without waking him up, she gets out of bed and gathers the clothing strewn on the floor.

It would be nice to surprise him, she thinks. He always cleans up after them, so maybe she should try. It would be a wonderful surprise. She hums to herself as she takes the basket of clothing downstairs to the laundry room.

At the laundry machine, she fiddles at the buttons and yelps when water begins to pour and the machine shakes. She turns it off. Misa takes in a breath and wonders briefly why she is doing this.

Because it would make Matsuda happy.

Misa giggles when she imagines the expression on his face.

Misa rumages through the pockets of the pants and the jackets and places the objects on the side. You cannot put a watch through the laundry. Or a wallet. Or crumpled bills. Or a pen.

It is almost like a game, seeing what comes out of Matsu's pockets.

Small address book. More bills. Change. A ring.

Misa picks up the small gold loop and stares at it. She slips it on her finger absently, takes it off, then puts it back on. It is too big for her-- Matsuda has knobbier knuckles than she does-- and it slides on her finger.

Matsuda has a ring, she thinks. And it is too big for her.

Realizations stir in her mind, sluggish and slow. She twists the ring around her finger. Her eyes are clear and dry. After a minute, she walks out of the laundry room and makes her way back to her bedroom. It is a much shorter journey without the hamper. It is much heavier with the ring. She opens the door to her room, and Matsuda blinks at her sleepily from the bed.

"Good morning, Misa," he says. A tuft of hair sticks out at the back of his head.

Misa feels her lips stretch into a smile, feels herself sliding into a role like she did when she was younger.

"Good morning, Matsu-chan," she says, then crawls into the bed. The ring is still cool around her finger. She kisses Matsuda, and he relaxes against her. "Sssh," she says, hushing him like a child.

It is too easy to take one of the pillows, rumpled at their side, and press it against his face. She straddles his waist and feels the jerk of shock. She clamps her thighs around his body as he struggles. His hands wrap around her wrists and she wonders what it is that gives her the strength to hold on. She waits until his hands unclench and drop to the bed, leaving white imprints of fingers with knobby knuckles on her skin.

Matsuda stills, but she waits a little bit longer.

When she gets up, the white on her wrists has filled in with splotchy red, and she wonders if they will turn blue.

Misa takes the ring off her finger and drops it on the nightstand. It drops on a sheet of paper than she does not recognize.

She picks it up and unfolds it slowly. It is a small sheet of paper, folded carefully into a rectangle.

"Keep this for the future," she reads.

"And you did," someone says behind her. She turns around slowly, knowing the voice and knowing the fact it belongs to. Light smiles at her, his hand resting on the boy's head. "You did well, Misa."

"Light--" she breathes.

She feels a pain in her chest, like something ripping, and she stares at the boy. He has a black notebook in his hand, and she remembers.

"_Light_," she says again, desperately, lovingly.

He walks to her, puts his hands to her face and looks at her. She is sprawled on the bed, reaching up towards him like a mermaid. "Look at us," he whispers.

She does, eyes lingering on his face, then darting reluctantly to the boy's.

"It's the future, Misa," he says.

Misa collapses against the bed and can hardly breathe past the pain. "Misa didn't want to grow old," she says. "But when Light left, she wanted Light to come back. So she waited."

The boy is watching her, eyes wide.

"But Light came back, and Misa is old."

"Older than you should be," Light agreed. "You should have died a long time ago."

"Misa wanted to see Light," she said. "She needed you."

She stares at Light, as though memorizing every feature. Misa suddenly collapses against the bed as though her muscles are cut.

The boy stares at his mother's body, draped over Matsuda's leg. His breath comes faster, and there is a sick taste on his tongue. He presses his hand against his mouth, then turns and retches on the floor.

Light watches as Misa's body begins to dry out, then turns to the boy.

"The first is always the hardest," he says. "But she will live again. _Kira_ will live again."

The boy wipes his mouth and straightens. He then looks at his father, his face clearing. "Am I-- am I Kira?" he asks.

"Yes," Light says simply. "My son."


End file.
